Lenten Sunshine

 Spending so many days indoors lately. Between windchill, cold temps, deep snow and mama laziness about dressing four kids up and down in all the required layers...we've just done a lot of holing up. The boys are starting to go a little crazy. Now that we are officially 29 days from Spring, I have managed to finally get each boy a set of real winter boots and an actual winter coat that actually zips. (How did my parents do it?!?!?! They had six!!!) We are finally equipped and the weather is starting to lift a little.

 The icicles are melting in the peak of the afternoon, the sky is aching blue and the sun is beaming down a lot lately. We have been braving cold and just going out and playing in the sun and snow until our hands ache. Its such a tonic just to be in the sunshine. Light matters.

 I was so excited last year when I bought a Seasonal Affective Disorder light to use on darker days. Hah. The boys stepped on it this year, round about November. I haven't been able to justify getting another so I've just been making it through relying on other boosters (liver, magnesium, coffee, hydration, visiting with friends, extra hugs...) to carry me through.

Today is Ash Wednesday and didn't make it out to get blessed or ashed which is a tiny bit sad. I also didn't run in a mad panic around freaking out about making it to church on time. There is enough space for everything in my life. I can do church and blessing and even ashing (heresy!!!) in the privacy and quiet of my own home sometimes and have a more holy interlude for the day I'm living today. I keep reminding myself that Lent is a season for letting go. I have a lot of that to do. Burying and symbolically burning and mourning the things that need to stop. This year I am fasting from close parking spaces, and leaving my dirty dishes heaped in the sink. I am going to try to write a few extra letters to those I love and drink more water and take time every day to do a little sacred devotional meditation from this cool website I just found called 3 Minute Retreat. Such a manageable, approachable, bite sized amount of devotion. I can do that.

Soak up all the sunshine where you are and think of us here, sending us the extra rays for our dark days yet ahead. Spring is still coming....

Zero Insanity For Lent

There is corned beef slowly simmering on the stove although I put it in late enough that I might not actually get to serve it tonight. I feel a sludge of would-be guilt trying to rise up in the back of my throat. I want to be a good mommy. I also almost ran out madly to the store to buy cabbage and potatoes and whatever else seemed important (leeks?) for having a truly Irish St. Patrick's Day dinner.

And then I realized that was insane.

I have made a pact with myself and with God for Lent. No ridiculous woman-pressure insanity.

There are no awards for "perfect" moms who serve all the most Irish foods on St. Patrick's Day and nobody even cares. The dinner doesn't taste better. The boys aren't happier. I am not more organized or more peaceful or more mature or any of the other feelings I am actually trying to cultivate in myself. Its ridiculous. We can see how the corned beef comes out and if it still isn't cooked enough we'll have it for breakfast. We can eat Polish Sausage out of the freezer and it will be quick and all the boys will love it (its one of their favorites). I have a soda bread that I bought that I can serve with extra butter. We can eat carrots (so Irish!) and we'll be fine. We don't need to spend more money on buying last minute festive foods. We don't need to spend more gas on running madly to the store at 6 PM. We don't need to spend our energy or harvest a big crop of stress (mommy yelling at the kids and boys all fussing as I pack them into and then haul them back out the car fro my manic trip to the store) all for the sake of a "festive meal." We can eat broccoli because its green and read the real story of St. Patrick and recite his breastplate prayer that the boys and I are working on memorizing.

I can cut myself free from the out of control madness. I don't need to act like a loony just because I am a woman and I feel pressure to be homemakey and clever and warm and creative. I can be all those things without being insane. I can do all those things while saving money. I can do all of them in smaller, low stress ways. I also don't have to manifest all of those things TODAY for St. Patrick's Day or risk losing my badge. There are no prizes for most harried mom, most overextended woman, most ridiculous self-deception.

There is personal peace.
There is a real legacy and a real man to celebrate in simple ways.
There is home and us and just having a meal at the end of the day.
There is a limit to how much we need fancy and celebration.

I can cut myself free and so can you.  This is my Lenten gift to myself and my family and God. Maybe by sharing it, its my gift to you.

The Late Winter Crawl

The baby has learnt to crawl. Suddenly I am aware again of every open doorway, our looming stairs, and the cords in every room that he so dearly loves to chew on. We are also in the midst of the human-carpet-sweeper stage, every little crumb and scrap of paper and stray bit of styrafoam is edible if it comes anywhere near his now-perfect pincer reach. Life is about to get really, really energetic. Its a season of movement and experimentation. Go!

I have my annual case of spring fever. I can feel it bubbling up inside of me and sometimes foaming out my ears without warning. I am positively magnetically drawn to the bundles of cut daffodils in the grocery store. I cannot escape the place without a cluster or two in my paw. I have started seeds for the veggie garden and have packets full of warmer weather seeds sitting by for wistful fondling. Time to grow some sprouts for sandwiches to fend off the blues.  Right?

The weather has been sunny and the morning sunrise occasionally breathtaking and I can palpably feel the days lengthening. I am praying morning prayer as a Lenten resolution using a Divine Office app on my phone in the middle of the morning which feels like the right thing to do after having seen a stunning sunrise. I have candles to light in my Mama Space in the sunroom and a little tabletop fountain to tinkle wetly in the background too, a beautiful prayer space. If I pray upstairs, where I write, outside my writing window I can see sapsicles hanging from the broken branches of the big sugar maple if the day is cold and chill sometimes a squirrel nibbling the sweet ice and bounding away to check out the tasty goodies on our compost pile.

This week A is taking a breather week before beginning his new job (that exciting, new life phase that will require thrift!) so we are doing lots of sitting around together and watching intriguing TED Talks at night and having slow mornings. There are just a few days left and then he will be off to train for two weeks in California leaving me and The Little Fellas for a fourteen day solo run. I am packing all of us in the car and taking off for Michigan to do some maple sugaring and maybe a little ice fishing with my parents in the north woods to keep us peppy and occupied. Good times ahead and lots of great blogging of the adventures along the way!

Checkups and Coral With a Side of Pea Shoots

Have just had another little check-up at the midwife and tomorrow I take the two big boys to their yearly appointments as well. Its a week for medical doctoring. We usually get very simple, happy news at the pediatricians. We've been very lucky to have such normal, easy childhood health situations so far. I do think there may be some shots for Dee which will be tricky since Ru is positively exultant over the fact that he is quite done with shots for a few years. Please lets not have a meltdown.

Brothers fooling around on Mommy's cell phone, under my recently framed apple painting in the office.

My appointment went well. Heartbeat sounds strong and clear (135!), my blood pressure is pumping along at a perfectly healthy spot, iron just a touch low, glucose test was all clear, and my weight...have I told you about my weight? My weight was wonderful! They always tell you to gain 20-25 lbs during a pregnancy and then I always gain more like 40-50 lbs. Intimidating to the max. Part of the problem is that I binge eat when stressed and pregnancy brings out very worst in my emotional instability. Part of it is honestly just laziness in menu planning and eating. But this time around I am doing amazingly well. I've gained 20 lbs so far and between last appointment and this I didn't gain anything at all, just held steady, although Baby continues to measure larger.

Typical lunch at our house. A plate full of nibbly bits, lots of produce and nothing that requires Mommy to cook. :)

I have been doing a good job lately, trying to eat carefully during the week and allow myself to cut loose on the weekends. I've heard this sort of back and forth effect is good for the metabolism and keeps food restraint from getting too restrained to keep up. I also gave up drive-through restaurants for Lent which was a very good plan. I sometimes skipped fast food and just went home to get food or even dashed into the grocery store and made better choices for quick lunch ideas. Am hoping to keep this going. I am also trying to track what I eat as consistently as I can and watch my nutrients using Fitday to be sure I'm hitting all the targets which is far more interesting and encouraging to me than watching calories.

You can see the matching baskets and new runner on top of the bookcase here.

In other news, my Interior Design class is done. I feel so-so about it. Am not terribly inspired as a result of what I heard and learned and I don't feel accomplished in the subject or anything like that but it is a toe in the door. I think I may take an online class next to see if a different instructor helps. My assignment for the class was the living room in our house and although I have just a few new ideas and no real progress there I did get a few thoughts for the dining room.

I put all our regularly used eating accoutrements (olive oil, salt, pepper, butter, etc.) into a pretty basket that matches one for bibs and cloth napkins. When the meal is over the get cleared to the top of my cookbook cupboard which functions as a sort of sideboard. I also bought matching runners for the top of the bookcase and the dining room table to try to pull in the coral color inside the corner cupboards. And I bought a stunning ceramic bowl for a between-meals centerpiece.

Am madly in love with it. Am now considering painting the walls a soft oatmeal grey to set off the white and coral accents. What do you think? After of course, I finish all this crazy spring cleaning I'm in the middle of.

The pea shoots are turning their velvety leaves to the sky and starting to uncurl tendrils here and there. I am hoping they really begin to climb sometime this week. We have forecasts for warmer weather and even a little rain (Heavens, we could use rain!) and spring is really chasing us down! Hooray!

Tiny Bouquet

I have been thinking Lenten thoughts, going over ways to add penance, giving and prayer to my life in more ways and one of the ways I've been working on is a silent walking time first thing in the morning. Time to pray, listen, be still, hear and just generally not be online or on my phone or carrying on two or three conversations at once with the boys. I've been enjoying it a lot and am starting to wind my walk down with a little poking around type browse around my own yard to see where spring is showing up and what little touches of new life I see. This week, I saw that my Lenten Rose is blooming! It was just an unlabeled, cheap grocery store potted variety that I put in the ground after it finished blooming for me indoors last year.

I so hoped it would take, a Lenten Rose has been on my gardeny wishlist for a long time and lucky, lucky me...I got one for a pittance at my local grocery! I think I bought a mixed pot of several different cream, pink and burgundy shades and it looks like only the dark wine color has managed to set itself firmly into the soil. Still amazing to me that even when we are getting temperatures in the 30's and sometimes even 20's this brave little flower does its thing, undeterred. I have noticed that there are still several upcoming buds so I took to liberty of bringing one indoors to enjoy in a bottle. What a treat to have a small bouquet from my own garden in February!

Related articles

• Lenten Journey (terri0729.wordpress.com)
• Hella-What?????? (thegardendiaries.wordpress.com)
• Lenten Practice (nationalavenuecc.com)

Ash Wednesday For Mommies

Image by jezobeljones via Flickr

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the holy Lenten season. I accidentally slept too late to attend our parish's Ash Wednesday service and receive ashes but, I did enjoy a special morning prayer session, thought about ashing myself (but chickened out), listened to high, ringing Gregorian chant and took the kids for a soothing drive during naptime. I needed some thinking space.

Image via Wikipedia

We went winding our way up the road, slow driving, silent radio, windows cracked, just looking to see what we saw. I brought my pruning shears and clipped some feral forsythia and then stopped again at the side of a little marsh and snipped a bouquet pussy willows and thought of the pussy willow tree leaning over our late-condo unit.

I parked the car in an ancient New England graveyard and unrolled the window to breath a little of the early spring chill. I called my sister and talked to her, digesting parenting maxims and our latest epiphanies and spiritual development. A bluebird flew past and landed in a tree directly in front of me. I've never seen a bluebird in my life. I have to say that the idea that it might be a sign, crossed my mind.

They are doing The Stations of the Cross at our church every Friday and I am toying with trying to go and take the boys. I know it sounds a little nuts to take children through something so somber and mature but, I am not sure I could find a way to go without them and I think there's something good about showing children that life includes death and sorrow and heaviness. This is real and in many ways good.

I am still not exactly sure what I am giving up for Lent. And yeah...here we are on the first day already. I have considered giving up the comfort of my pillow but I honestly think it might not be much of a sacrifice since I occasionally sleep flat on the mattress for part of the night anyhow. I have toyed with different food penances and am not sure I have anything very solid there and I am not sure where else to go with my mental train of thought but I am still praying and waiting with open hands for something I can release. Letting go can be so good.

Related articles

• Lent for Dummies (chicagonow.com)
• The Liberation Of Giving Up (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Ash Wednesday Observed (trinityhawaii.wordpress.com)
• Kids ask: What's Ash Wednesday? (dsgnmomonline.wordpress.com)
• Your Educational Guide to Ash Wednesday (badlandsbadley.wordpress.com)
• Ash Wednesday: Why Ashes Are Applied in The Forehead (analuzcastro.wordpress.com)

The Season of Lent

Lent begins today. We started the morning with an early morning Ash Wednesday service at church with a small group of friends and then the boys and I came home to talk it all over together through the rest of the morning. We talked about how Lent is a time like Advent when you look forward to an exciting new holiday and when you try to remember some special principles (Advent: hope, expectation, promise....Lent: how life can come from death, how loss and letting go can be good, self discipline) and we refreshed them on the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection.

At naptime we read the first story in one of their children's Bibles after the visitation of the three kings. We'll keep reading the life of Jesus through Advent until we reach the story of Easter itself.

Then we took a little break from all the chatter to dye a tablecloth to use on our dining room table during the Lenten season. The seasonal color of Lent is a deep purple, symbolic of royal dignity, solemnity and penance so, we took a white tablecloth and together the boys stirred it in the sink until it was a deep grapey shade. So pretty. They both had a lot of fun and we have a new decoration to remind us of the time of year we're going through.

I always try to give up something or things for Lent....a form of fasting (the only permissible form at the moment since I'm pregnant) and a way to give up something that in some way distances me from God and allow Him additional connection spots in my life. This year I'm giving up:

• Stress Binging on Bad Foods: This is an embarrassingly wretched behavior I've developed. I get stressed out and instead of (or sometimes in combination with) freaking out, I down a bunch of candy, leftover dessert items, Doritos....etc. Terrible, no good, very bad way. I am going to try to replace this behavior with eating something good for me or drinking water. This is also a subtle way to bless my baby and think charitably of the little one instead of downing toxic levels of less than helpful foods.

• Music to Fill The Spaces: I'm going to give up ambient music from iTunes and playing the radio in the car whenever we drive anywhere. The idea is not at all that music is bad (heaven knows, I love it a lot) but, I think a time of quiet is a good idea. I am hoping it will encourage us to make our own music, help me listen to my kids more and talk to them and just allow a space for peace and silence, the kind of place where scripture tells us the still small voice of God tends to show up.

I'm hoping to do a light form of food fasting and serve fish on Fridays instead of land animal protein which we have all the other nights. I am also trying to make sure to eat fish frequently now for the sake of getting all the Omega 3's that Baby needs for brain development at this stage.

One of my other goals for Lent is to try to find small ways to work charity into my life with my kids. I think there are some practical, kid accessible ways that we can participate in meaningful charity...taking gifts to neighbors, writing cards and letters for sick friends, picking out a little extra at the grocery store for the local food bank....etc. This is however, one of the weak areas of my Lenten plan. If you have ideas about how to teach kids to give to those in need, do share!